With no immediate let-up anticipated for the scorching heat over the American south-west – where temperatures have reached more than 110F (43.3C) in the day and not dropped below 90F (32.2C) at night – a Phoenix emergency room doctor has resorted to using children’s pools and large zip-bags filled with ice to cool heatstroke victims.
Frank LoVecchio, a Phoenix-area emergency room medical toxicologist, told CBS News that he had treated three or four cases of heatstroke over the past three days using the technique, which involves covering the patient with ice until only their eyes and mouth are showing.
LoVecchio said the heatwave was “recording-breaking, but unfortunately we’re breaking the wrong records”. He said that each patient requires five staff in attendance, adding: “We’re tight on staff, so everything else in the emergency department kind of comes to a halt.”
Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the US, is now entering its ninth night with temperatures that have not dipped below 90F. Daytime temperatures have not dropped below 110F for 19 days. With no relief expected before August, LoVecchio said the Valleywise hospital he works in was preparing for more of the same.
“This is the worst we’ve seen,” he added.
The National Weather Service warned in a forecast issued on Tuesday that the “well-documented record heatwave will continue across the region through this week and likely beyond, as an excessive heat warning remains in effect through Friday evening”.
The NWS placed each of the coming days in the “extreme” category, the highest level, which signifies that everyone exposed is at risk. Heat-related deaths have risen sharply over the last two years. Some 425 were recorded in 2022; this year 12 have been recorded so far, with 55 others currently under investigation.
“Heat is an insidious, silent killer,” Stacey Champion, a community advocate who has been pushing for better protections for the most vulnerable, told the Guardian this week. “This is not a today problem. We have seen it coming.”
Fifty-six percent of people who died from the heat last year in Maricopa county, which encompasses Phoenix, were unhoused. Of the people who died indoors, all were living in homes and buildings that were not cooled. The fatalities also reveal racial disparities: 11% of heat-related deaths were among the Black population but only 6.8% of Maricopa’s population is African American.
